Three fresh indie releases
Social roundups flagged new indie releases this week, naming Gunboat God, Relic Abyss, and REPLACED among the recent drops getting attention (x.com). Posts include early impressions and links to storefront pages as players begin to surface performance and first‑hour reactions (x.com).
Three indie games hit players’ queues this week: Gunboat God launched on April 13, Relic Abyss entered Early Access on April 13, and REPLACED arrived on April 14. (fireshinegames.co.uk) (store.steampowered.com 1) (store.steampowered.com 2) Gunboat God is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up from solo developer Janson RAD, published by Fireshine Games, with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam versions dated for April 13, 2026. On Steam, it launched at $12.99 with a 25% introductory discount to $9.74 through April 27. (fireshinegames.co.uk) (store.steampowered.com) Relic Abyss is a “bullet heaven” roguelite role-playing game from Reverse Loop and Mameshiba Games, and it opened in Steam Early Access on April 13 at $8.99 with a 10% launch discount for two weeks. A Steam community post from April 6 said the Early Access build was Steam Deck Verified and that the price is set to rise to $11.99 at version 1.0. (steamcommunity.com) (store.steampowered.com) REPLACED is the biggest-name release of the three: Sad Cat Studios’ 2.5D action platformer launched on April 14 on Steam for $19.99 and arrived day one on Xbox Game Pass for Xbox Series X|S and PC. Xbox Wire said on March 10 that the game was scheduled for Game Pass at launch, and Steam now lists it as released. (news.xbox.com) (store.steampowered.com) These releases landed in a crowded April window that also includes larger publishers’ spring launches, which makes storefront visibility and social discovery unusually important for smaller games. Xbox Wire’s April 10 release roundup listed REPLACED alongside Hades 2, Pragmata, and other higher-profile arrivals in the same week. (news.xbox.com) The three games are also selling different promises to the same discovery feeds. Gunboat God leans on arcade shooting and boss fights, Relic Abyss mixes survivors-style runs with role-playing game progression, and REPLACED is pitching cinematic combat in a retro-futurist 1980s setting. (fireshinegames.co.uk) (store.steampowered.com) (news.xbox.com) REPLACED also arrived after a late delay. A Steam news post said the team shifted launch to April 14, 2026, from an earlier April target to allow “final optimization and polish.” (store.steampowered.com) Pre-release interest was already visible before launch. Sad Cat Studios said on Steam that REPLACED had passed 850,000 wishlists and 185,000 demo players ahead of release, while Gunboat God’s separate Steam demo held a 95% positive rating from 40 user reviews when Steam last crawled it. (store.steampowered.com 1) (store.steampowered.com 2) For now, the common thread is timing: all three are newly in players’ hands, and the first public signals are coming from storefront pages, launch discounts, and early-access notes rather than long-tail review averages. By midweek, each had moved from wishlist season to the harder test of live player reaction. (store.steampowered.com 1) (store.steampowered.com 2) (store.steampowered.com 3)
